Saturday Night Cinema: Out of the Past

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Tonight’s Saturday Night Cinema is one of my top 10 films, and certainly my favorite film noir of all time — well, tied with A Touch of Evil. If you ever get the chance to view it on the big screen, go. It was Out of the Past that turned me on to the film noir genre, and I was hooked hard every since. Longtime GR fans know how I feel about Robert Mitchum — he is the ideal man. I’d kill for some Mitchum.

No one ever smoked and brooded and loomed like Robert Mitchum. And he never did it as definitively as he does in Out of the Past, a stylish and devastating noir that was one of a hat-trick of perfect genre pieces directed by Jacques Tourneur in the 1940s (along with Cat People and I Walked with a Zombie). Viewers not enamoured of the actor’s somnambulant manner might take the latter title for a description of what it must be like to act alongside Mitchum. But that would be to miss the bitter, internalised hurt and wounded hope he brings to his performance here; just because he’s still, that doesn’t mean he’s not suffering.

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Mitchum plays Jeff Bailey, a private eye hired by Whit Sterling (Kirk Douglas) to track down his errant lover, Kathie Moffat (Jane Greer), who skedaddled after swiping $40,000 of his money. Oh, and shooting him. It may not be any surprise that when Jeff catches up with the fugitive femme fatale, there is a crackle of attraction between them. The seductive skill of the movie lies in its masterful evocation of that sensual, fatalistic bleakness crucial to noir. From Nicholas Musuraca’s chiaroscuro cinematography (“It was so dark on set, you didn’t know who else was there half the time,” said Greer) to Roy Webb’s plangent score and the guarded, electrifying performances, it’s nothing short of a noir masterclass.

The screenplay was adapted by Daniel Mainwaring from his own novel, Build My Gallows High (the film’s UK title). But the sharpened splinters of dialogue also bear the mark of Cain — James M Cain, that is, the legendary author of noir landmarks The Postman Always Rings Twice and Double Indemnity, who performed vital but uncredited rewrites. According to Mitchum’s biographer, Lee Server, it was Cain who expunged Kathie of any traces of lovability. “She can’t be all bad — no one is,” one character remarks of her. To which Jeff shoots back: “She comes the closest.” RG

The NY Times review:

Out of the Past (1947) RKO Mystery Starring Robert Mitchum

By Bosley Crowther, NY Times

Published: November 26, 1947

There have been double- and triple-crosses in many of these tough detective films, and in one or two Humphrey Bogart specials they have run even higher than that. But the sum of deceitful complications that occur in “Out of the Past” must be reckoned by logarithmic tables, so numerous and involved do they become. The consequence is that the action of this new film, which came to the Palace yesterday, is likely to leave the napping or unmathematical customer far behind.

Frankly, that’s where it left us. We were with it, up to a point, and enjoying the rough-stuff and the romance with considerable delight and concern. For this story of an ex-private detective who is shanghaied from a quiet, prosaic life to get involved with his old criminal associates is intensely fascinating for a time. And it is made even more galvanic by a smooth realistic style, by fast dialogue and genuine settings in California and Mexican locales.

But after this private detective has re-encountered an old girl friend (who originally double-crossed him after luring him to double-cross his boss, whom she had shot) and the two get elaborately criss-crossed in a plot to triple-cross our boy again, the involutions of the story become much too complex for us. The style is still sharp and realistic, the dialogue still crackles with verbal sparks and the action is still crisp and muscular, not to mention slightly wanton in spots. But the pattern and purpose of it is beyond our pedestrian ken. People get killed, the tough guys browbeat, the hero hurries—but we can’t tell you why.

However, as we say, it’s very snappy and quite intriguingly played by a cast that has been well and smartly directed by Jacques Tourneur. Robert Mitchum is magnificently cheekly and self-assured as the tangled “private eye,” consuming an astronomical number of cigarettes in displaying his nonchalance. And Jane Greer is very sleek as his Delilah, Kirk Douglas is crisp as a big crook and Richard Webb, Virginia Huston, Rhonda Fleming and Dickie Moore are picturesque in other roles. If only we had some way of knowing what’s going on in the last half of this film, we might get more pleasure from it. As it is, the challenge is worth a try.
OUT OF THE PAST, screen play by Geoffrey Homes; directed by Jacques Tourneur; produced by Warren Duff for RKO Radio Pictures, Inc. At the RKO Palace.
Jeff . . . . . Robert Mitchum
Kathie . . . . . Jane Greer
Whit . . . . . Kirk Douglas
Meta Carson . . . . . Rhonda Fleming
Jim . . . . . Richard Webb
Fisher . . . . . Steve Brodie
Ann . . . . . Virginia Huston
Joe . . . . . Paul Valentine
The Kid . . . . . Dickie Moore
Eels . . . . . Ken Niles

 

OUT OF THE PAST (1947) BUILD MY GALLOWS HIGH

 

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MuhamMUDTheFakeProphet
MuhamMUDTheFakeProphet
5 years ago

Mitchum got top billing over Kirk Douglas? That’s something I’ve never seen.

Buck
Buck
5 years ago

He deserved it!

jkarna
jkarna
5 years ago

Mitchum was perfect in ‘Night of the Hunter’ and in the original ‘Cape Fear’. He did not have to utter profanities in the way second-rate, DeNero had to in the poor remake.

Ziggy46
Ziggy46
5 years ago
Reply to  jkarna

Agreed, a brilliant performance in the films mentioned. I refuse to watch the remake of Cape Fear; the original was excellent. Robert Mitchum was a brilliant actor whose eyes and facial expressions relayed more than the script or enhanced it. The times, as said, were different scripts were often solid, not always, and profanities were a no-no. Classic movies, if I may use the term, are not unlike time-machines; transporting one back to an era that was seemingly simpler when one is up against the present’s realities.

Jim Sanchez
Jim Sanchez
5 years ago
Reply to  jkarna

“Night of the Hunter” is one of the scariest movies of all time IMO. Just think the films that Charles Laughton could have made if he were allowed to make more. Sadly, this was his first and only film. Mitchum and Shirley Winters were perfect and the scene in the water with her hair flowing in the current is amazing.

Phyllis Gittens
Phyllis Gittens
5 years ago

DeNiro is a zero. Mitchum has always been great.

Alleged-Comment
Alleged-Comment
5 years ago

Aha! I know your type. Got the fella just right for you. (Runs to car, makes phone call, waits an a half hour. Runs back).

Here Pam, just the fella for you. My pal SYLVESTERRR (watch for the spit) STALLONE!!!

Same brooding long face! (Sadly, but without the class). 😉

Jim Sanchez
Jim Sanchez
5 years ago

One of my favorites is “Touch of Evil” with Orson Wells at his corpulent and evil best.

poetcomic1
poetcomic1
5 years ago

Funny, but Bosley Crowther misses out more great films in his reviews than any of the top critics of his time. Very often in his career he has to come back a year or two later and confess something was a masterpieces that he canned when it came out.

D A
D A
5 years ago

Since Pam thinks Mitchum is the Ideal man….. I wonder what she thinks of the Christmas movie ” Holiday Affair” 1940s. ?Or the Winds of War series ?

RCCA
RCCA
5 years ago

Also loved Mitchum in “Winds of War” and “War and Remembrance.” Absolutely epic performance.

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